Steven Soderbergh discusses how Jaws inspired him to make films, why he started making genre films, and how to succeed in the streaming era.
Steven Soderbergh is a beloved filmmaker. He changed the game of indie filmmaking with his film Sex, Lies, and Videotape in 1989 and has been making iconic films ever since, including Contagion, the Ocean’s trilogy, and Magic Mike. More recently, he’s made Kimi and Full Circle. He spoke at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) as his most recent film, the ghost story Presence, is set to get its international premiere. There, he talked about his journey in the film industry, from his youth to today.
For Soderbergh, it all started with Jaws. He recalls seeing the film at the age of 12 at a theater in St. Petersburg, Florida, as recorded by The Hollywood Reporter, and when he was done, he came out with two questions: “What does directed by mean? And who is Steven Spielberg?” These questions would take him on the trajectory towards directing, as he picked up The Jaws Log by Carl Gottlieb in order to sate his desire to learn more about filmmaking and how directors problem-solve on set. “I carried this book around with me, it was like the Bible. I wore out many copies,” he recounted. In high school, Soderbergh found himself around filmmaking equipment and began making short films.
Eventually, he would debut his first feature film, Sex, Lies, and Videotape, a film which would have a massive impact on the landscape of indie film, helping to create a renaissance in auteur filmmaking–filmmaking centering on the director as a singular creative visionary. “It just felt like people were ready to see something made by an individual again after having taken a breather. They wanted to see a signature. They wanted to feel like a real person was talking to them,” Soderbergh said.Today’s auteurs are a little different than they were in Soderbergh’s early days. This overlay of commercial filmmaking and a signature directorial presence lately, to be honest, that’s most apparent in horror films,” he said.
Soderbergh espoused the benefits of genre films, especially horror. He argues that his recent work–ever since his two-part film Che–have been genre films. “I just feel everybody wins if you’re respectful of the pillars of what that genre is. You can load this thing up with anything you’re interested in,” Soderbergh explained. He’s carrying through that perspective with Presence, which tells a ghost story from the viewpoint of a ghost–literally, as the camera takes on the point of view of the ghost.
Today’s era is dominated by streaming. However, theatrical releases are still important. Soderbergh has some advice for theatrical films, saying, “For movies to work, they need movie stars. It’s great if the story is big enough to pull people in on its own, but that’s hard, and increasingly harder to do.” It’s hard to make a hit in the changing landscape of Hollywood. “It’s gotten more difficult to quantify what is bringing people to a specific film, and what makes a specific film a hit,” Soderbergh observed. But he emphasizes one important element to surviving the modern age, saying, “At the end of the day, the only solve is good sh*t. You got to make good sh*t. You’ve got to focus on that.”
Source: The Hollywood Reporter